OT: Is There A Hacker Convention Going On?

[Timstone]

I don't know how it works, but I know the router is a physical barrier against viriea. Though the router isn't a full protection against outside trouble. I have a router (so does a friend of mine) and we regularly have encountered a hacker or virus inside the network (past the router).

[Thermodyne]

There are a couple of new worms making the rounds today. I was getting too many alerts from the firewall. My mail box kept filling up, had to turn the alerts off.

[Thermodyne]

Timstone said:
I don't know how it works, but I know the router is a physical barrier against viriea. Though the router isn't a full protection against outside trouble. I have a router (so does a friend of mine) and we regularly have encountered a hacker or virus inside the network (past the router).

That would be worms. The worms use ports and or protos that can be blocked by the firewall.

Virus files are filtered by Antivirus software based on bit count/headers/etc. Some high end firewalls can also run antivirus. But I never saw a home-use nat/router/firewall that could do anything with virus files and still allow normal traffic.

[Timstone]

Thermodyne:
Ehhh... what do you mean? I fear I'm hopelessly outclassed by your knowledge about this kind of stuff. I yield.

Edit:
I just repeated what I was told, or better yet, made to believe.

[Blue Lord]

The router will, unless told otherwise, stop your ports from responding to pings. Someone pings your IP, worst case, the recieve "Port open to connections". As far as computer security goes, it goes downhill from there. Second worst case it responds with "Port's here, but closed". Best case, unless you did something to prompt the ping or have a specific port set to accept connection, it doesn't respond at all.

Which means the hacker in question might aswell be throwing packets at a computer that's turned off.

Add a firewall and a paranoid mind and you're safe as can be, short of *shudder* get rid of your modem.

[Jack Simth]

Nothing unusual showing up in my router's security log.

Of course, I've got it set to block pings....

[Baron Munchausen]

If you are getting LOTS of attacks from the same IP addresses, you should look up the source and send a complaint to the domain. Lots of tools are available online. You can do reverse lookups and WHOIS at this site, as well as get the 'abuse' address to report problems.

http://www.dnsstuff.com/

[narf poit chez BOOM]

The laws against breaking and entering need to be extended to electronic breaking and entering.